


Jekyll & Hyde - ITV - Episode Three (Meta/Review)

by Boji



Category: Jekyll and Hyde (TV), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Review, Gen, Meta, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:09:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5217392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji





	Jekyll & Hyde - ITV - Episode Three (Meta/Review)

With this episode Charlie Higson cements the metaphor of addiction, as Robert Jekyll fights transforming into Hyde, and we learn a little more of the mysteries surrounding his family. Add in some damn fine acting, and this is the first episode of the series that I've truly enjoyed. Well, until the last fifteen minutes or so.

  
Tom Bateman commands the scenes he's in fantastically well. So too Donald Sumpter, who plays against him as Garson, inspiring compassion and empathy for his younger charge. Add Ruby Bentall, who is playing Hills as a cross between [Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple](http://silverscenesblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/miss-jane-marple-wiry-framed-spinster.html) and [Joyce Grenfell](http://www.bristol.ac.uk/theatre-collection/explore/theatre/joyce-grenfell-archive/), and what we have is a fantastic cast making more of the comicbook-esque drama than what must have been scripted.

This third episode pivots around Jekyll's increasing inability to control his inner Hyde, the rage seething under his skin driving his search for a chemical panacea. It also reaches back through time (and Garson's memories) to the late 1890's and the Victorian musical hall era, during which the novel (this is loosely based upon) was set. Interestingly, both the tale of Jekyll's grandmother Maggie - from musical hall singer to mistress amply provided for with a flat in town - and the action taking place primarily in the basement of the Jekyll family residence give this episode far less of a modern aka faux Twenties feel. Oh, Hills feels like a modern woman. And Bella Charming does sit in the centre of her business _Empire_ , possibly doing accounts, but the tone of the episode feels darker, gothic, Victorian.

That mood may have swept in with a blood red fog (or red dust cloud?) from Gravesend, together with one disembarking Captain Dance. He lands in England with his lethal love Fedora and their snarling, crawling, skeleton dogs which he's brought to London no doubt to hunt down Robert Jekyll. But the master of this hunt also carries a gun, one that fires syringes instead of bullets. Green, red or black, these bullets are a medicinal monokane. Green for Jekyll. Red for Hyde. Black monokane literally separating human molecules, bypassing the combustion stage, and reducing humans to vampiric ash-stain like a stake through the heart.

In 1897, eleven years after Robert Louis Stevenson published _"The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"_ , H.G. Wells published _"The Invisible Man"._ The novel tells the tale of a scientist (like Jekyll) who experiments on himself (like Jekyll) and having turned invisible cannot make himself visible again. He then decides that being invisible is a license to act without moral restraint on his actions, much like Jekyll, or (in this case) Robert Jekyll's grandfather. In the novel the bleaching agent that Griffin (H.G. Well's anti-hero) uses is called "Monocaine". It's a bleaching agent which, when ingested or injected, causes insanity. And, I assume, it's where the inspiration for the chemical compound harvested from a purple lotus flower comes from.  


  


Charlie Higins has unmistakably drawn inspiration from everywhere and doubtless from comic books too - although they're not a medium I'm not familiar with. This work is indisputably derivative, but so much so that I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't as much a televisual mashup as anything else.

In this episode, the bulk of the narrative and action takes place in the basement laboratory unearthed in the previous episode. It's a set almost in the round - theatrically - and the primary scenes between Jekyll and Garson definitely benefit from that. Tom Bateman is superb as he rages and later writhes in agony as Jekyll. The metaphor of addiction and withdrawal beautifully captured in his performance. And, it's a performance enhanced by Sumpter's reactions. Thus, we (the audience) see the lead/Jekyll from Garson's point of view and are reassured in our belief that this young man is the antithesis of his late Grandfather. Unlike Henry Jekyll, Rupert isn't at heart _mad, bad and dangerous to know_. Robert's exterior nature is his true nature, by choice. Thus, he stands as antithesis to his grandfather, choosing to be a gentleman and to fight the suppressed beast within - which has to be read through a modern lens as a metaphor for addiction, alcoholism, or drug addiction. Though, at a push, the metaphor probably also works for mental health and the way that medication can help someone find an equilibrium despite their illness and live a normal life.

If the metaphors above fit, it's primarily because the acting is so good from Bateman.

And talking of metaphor, in placing the lab underground (accessible via secret passage) and having Robert Jekyll trussed and tied up, whilst Lily Cole is turned away from the house to the sounds of his suffering, coupled with CGI casting red veins across Tom Bateman's straining face, it might be said there's a subtextual element of the myth of [The Minotaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaur) at play here. There are two legends of the Minotaur. In the Athenian version, the Minotaur is slain and Theseus weds Ariadne. Etruscan legend and art focuses on the myth of Pasiphaë and depicts her as the mother of a half-human half-bull hybrid child: the Minotaur. Is it stretching metaphor a bit far to suggest Robert's mother represents Pasiphaë? Or that Lily Cole might do so in future?

Pasiphaë and the Minotaur, Attic red-figure kylix, Cabinet des Médailles (Paris).

Lily is undoubtedly the 'good woman' as portrayed in Film Noir, she who can save a fallen man. But, there's a great deal about Lily that is suspect: Her as yet unseen and possibly fictitious mother. The way she first bumped into and Robert Jekyll. Why thugs were after her. Was the jeopardy Jekyll saved her from a set up, so he'd see her as a damsel needing rescue? These were questions needing answer before her oh-so-useful [Marie Curie](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/curie_marie.shtml) chemistry skills were introduced. With a degree in biochemistry and a laboratory set up in her living room, Lily does strike me as being too good to be true! She also strikes me as a lost opportunity, dramatically. Given Helen Gwynne-Vaughan was the [ female head of the Botany Department at Birkbeck College ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gwynne-Vaughan) in the 1920's (indeed [from 1909](http://www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/history/great-birkbeckians/)) might it not have have been interesting to have had Lily securing laboratory space at the college, and so open the _Jekyll and Hyde_ world out onto London in the Twenties in such a way?

But I digress.

The love of a good woman taming or saving a man is, of course, a theme threading through this episode. It's in the guise of Maggie, whom Garson loved and lost, and who became the single mother of a boy with a secret Hyde i.e. Robert's father. I assume his father grew up in the house we see, in the middle of the countryside. I assume he grew up in partial in seclusion. And, I assume Tenebrae always knew where Maggie was. Whilst it's obvious the M.I.O have recently been infiltrated (the scene in the cinema, with the envelope of pound notes being slipped to an informer soldier, reminiscent of many a spy film) it's less obvious as to how the villains of the piece found Robert Jekyll's Grandmother. It doesn't seem likely that they shook down Bella Charming.

But both factions (intelligence service and supernatural cultists) seem to have been watching Robert Jekyll and no doubt his father before him.  


  
  


The B-plot thread snaking its way across Ceylon, as Ravi travels, confirms that much. With his Harry Potter glasses, moustached and besuited in order to appear older, I assume Ravi is a hit with younger viewers. Personally, I love his ingenuity and daring do. Loved the fact that he took the pills rescued from the jungle laboratory and placed them into a puzzle box, posting them to England, in order that they might get to Rupert safely, or faster than Ravi. I look forward to what Michael Karim, who plays Ravi, may bring to the drama, once he's reunited with his adopted brother.  


  
  


Acting wise in this episode, aside from the scenes with Garson and Jekyll, I really enjoyed the scene between Bella and Hills; each woman seeking to best the other. Both holding their own and their liquor. Yes, Ruby Benson is all dressed up in elements of Twenties caricature (shotgun and swagger) but she's all the more amusing and charming because of it.

The weak points, for me, are primarily the way the monsters veer more and more towards the cartoon-esque i.e. the claw man who was hijacked from M.I.O in order to be used in the attack on Jekyll's grandmother and, given that we're now three episodes in, the lack of a clearer dramatic arc aside from Jekyll's personal journey.

High points remain the acting. Low points? The monsters and their lack of subtlety.


End file.
